Plan panel-CII body to look into growth hurdles

At a time when various policy stakeholders do not seem to be working in tandem, an organisation will be unveiled next week to find common ground among the diverse players, to move the economy to its growth potential.

To be called India Backbone Implementation Network (IBIN), it is to identify and remove various hurdles in the way of inclusive economic expansion. Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia will launch IBIN next week. IBIN is an initiative of the Planning Commission and India@75, an grassroots initiative of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The stated dream is an inclusive, sustainable and developed India by 2022.

Infosys' chairman-emeritus N R Narayana Murthy, Tata Group Chairman Cyrus P Mistry, Housing Development Finance Corporation Chairman Deepak Parekh and Godrej Group President Adi Godrej are among the trustees of India@75. Its executive council includes luminaries from various walks of life such as lyricist Javed Akhtar, sportsman Prakash Padukone and innovator R A Mashelkar.

Officials said the network will work on the principle that in a highly diverse and democratic country, consensus and partnerships among multi-faceted and diverse stakeholders are the only ways to progressively move ahead.

IBIN aims to facilitate this process. The idea is to enable people to listen to each other, help them to identify similarities in their visions and aspirations and make them work together as partners in progress.

The network will seek to resolve the bottlenecks identified by the Planning Commission, such as land- related problems and other infrastructure issues, and try to build a multi-stakeholder consensus over these matters.

The network will impart new techniques into the service delivery system, build a network of partners to create the capability to manage effective stakeholder dialogues, resolve disputes and conduct policy impact analysis; also, pro-actively, create solutions, officials added. It will serve as a backbone capability provider within the system and will support collaborative approaches to solve complex issues.

"IBIN is a fantastic opportunity to resolve issues pertaining to poor implementation and lack of multi-stakeholder consensus, by institutionalising capabilities to systematically convert confusion to coordination, contention to collaboration and intentions to implementation across the country," said Arun Maira, a member of the Planning Commission.

The network professes to be modelled on the philosophy of Total Quality Management. TQM is based on the premise that the quality of products and processes is the responsibility of everyone involved with the creation or consumption of the products or services offered by an organisation.

Confederation of Indian Industry director general Chandrajit Banerjee, a trustee of India @75 said coordination is the first step towards building India at 75 (post-British India will be 75 years old in 2022) and IBIN would "lead us into a new era".